Flexible formation of the Multi-robot system and its application on CMOMMT problem

Abstract

Rigid formation of Multi-robot system has been studied in many papers. But the fixed shape is not suitable in many cases. We believe the goal of formation is to accomplish a given task better. So whether the shape is rigid or precise is not the most important thing in many cases. Here the concept of flexible formation is given. Such formation is virtual and the shape is varying. It could adapt to the changing tasks and environment more naturally. Based on the idea of flexible formation, we give a new CMOMMT (Cooperative Multi-robot Observation of Multiple Moving Targets) algorithm F-CMOMMT. Simulation results showed it performed better than the previous algorithms based on virtual force significantly.